You are ALWAYS the Pursuer

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1 John 4:19 “We love, because He first loved us”

Have you ever had one of those days that you wished someone would call you and invite you to dinner?? I definitely have those days. I work for Young Life, which is an out reach ministry. This means, I do a lot of organizing and planning small events, which is a lot of me pursuing of others. Don’t misunderstand me, I absolutely LOVE my job and I would not trade it for anything, but sometimes we all have these thoughts, it would be nice if someone would pursue me.

These are very real feelings and community is very important, but I am SO thankful for my area director telling me when I was a college Young Life leader at leadership that “YOU ARE ALWAYS THE PURSUER”. We were having a leadership meeting and I remember exactly where I was sitting, because this truth hit me like a ton of bricks. As a Young Life leader I don’t need to wait for a high school kid to come to me, I need to pursue them. As a friend, I don’t need to sit around and hope that someone will call me for coffee, I need to pursue her. When I am struggling, I don’t need to sit around and hope that someone will read my mind; I need to pursue wise counsel.

This is a very hard truth to learn, because of course we want to be pursued and loved. The only way we can do this is if we know the one who first loved us. We have a God that will stop at no expense to pursue us. He longs to know us intimately. He longs for us to know Him intimately. That is why He sent His son. “Jesus is the visible expression of the invisible God” Colossian’s 1:15. If we want to know what God is  like we can look at the life of Jesus. When we know that we are deeply loved, we will not wait around for people to love us, but be so overflowing with HIS love and be a pursuer of people just like our God is a pursuer of us. In fact, that is what Jesus called His disciples to do. He took ordinary fisherman and called them to be fishers of MEN.  The truth is, at some point we have to get over ourselves and realize that everyone wants exactly what we want. We all want to be desired, pursued, and loved.  

When I lived in Portugal it was an incredibly lonely time. I thought my roommate was my only friend.  When you live in a foreign country and don’t speak the language that well you are an outsider. After several months of moping around wishing I had more friends, my roommate and I had a brainstorming session and realized that we knew a lot more people than we thought, we just didn’t know them well. So we started a weekly Monday night dinner. We invited anyone that we could think of that spoke English. I am not going to lie, there were many awkward Monday nights that no one really spoke and my roommate and I felt like we were doing a dog and pony show to entertain. But eventually community started to form, and relationships were built. In fact, I know of two marriages that were formed from these Monday night dinners. This is an amazing reminder that when we are the pursuers, God will always show up and provide.

I have some nights I am exhausted but being an extrovert I still long for a friend to call. I can see now that these nights are the nights that Jesus is longing for me to be with Him. He LOVES us, and so longs to spend time with us. He is eagerly waiting for the moments when we will remember to pursue Him. The nights we think we have no one to talk to are the nights that we need to pull out our worship music and journals and sit at the feet of the one who loves us the most.

We need community. We need the body of believers. And from what I can gather, most women just need to chat. So lets stop waiting for someone to pursue us, lets be the pursuers! Lets pursue Jesus first, so that we might be filled and be able to pursue others the way that he first pursued us. I think this is what real Jesus loving community is like.

ALWAYS BE THE PURSUER!

P.S.

I have one exception to this rule. When it comes to dating relationships, I do not think we need to be the pursuers. Call me old fashion, but there is something about letting a man take the lead and be the one that pursues that I think is biblical. Men want to be strong leaders, we need to let them lead… even from the very beginning of a relationship.